Question

Chapter 6 in Bazerman & Moore (2013) cover how emotion and motivation influence decisions. Reconciling internal conflicts can be a challenge but keeping these elements limited when creating a strategic plan during the decision-making process is a skill that becomes transferrable to other areas of management and leadership.

For your initial post, think about crisis management such as one of the recent school shootings. You are on the school board. You have small children in the school system. Discuss how you would need to keep emotions out of the planning to avoid another school shooting. What types of things need to be addressed to keep emotions away from the creation of a plan?

• Initial Post Length: minimum of 350 words

Answer 1

Knowing that a recent school shooting happened in my school and I have to address the situation and make the plan accordingly is a key task that has to be performed. As this is one of the crisis management situation, one has to keep the emotions aside to make a good plan and strategy to address the same situation accordingly. The reason because of which the emotions are to be kept aside is because emotions tend to overlap your brain and impacts how rationally you are taking and performing the decision making analysis. For example, if a recent case of school shooting happened in your school and parents are complaining about the safety and security of your child at any cost, you cannot take the decision to shut the school or convert your school to a total virtual environment because of getting influenced by the emotions and security for everyone. You have to keep your mind calm and composed in critical situations to make sure the decisions you take are rational, important and also be the most feasible to carry out in the organisation. Thus, the things that are very important to be addressed to keep the emotions aside and making sure everything goes as per the plan are:

1. Data and information: The first important thing that is needed to be taken care of before making any decision in the time of crisis management is the relevance and importance of data and information. Always have critical data and information about the alternatives available, the cost, the benefits, the risks and the consequences involved with each alternative that you have searched out to make the decision. Make sure your decision is never prompt and you take the decision with a calm and composed mind.
2. Communication: Another important thing is the communication. Communicate your decision with everyone. Don’t make the decision all by yourself and then implement. Always consider and include everyone in your decision making process to make sure the right consequences and ideas could be provided to you at this time of crisis management.
3. Feedback: And at last, always ask for feedback. Always count on relevant feedback to make sure everyone understand the decision taken and also to count if everyone is on board with the decision and if not, then why and how we can improve the situation with team work.